Photo: Zainub , Flickr, CC It’s so simple — so gloriously simple. In 2008, China instated a law that made it illegal for stores to give out plastic bags for free . Instead, shop owners were required to charge for the bags, and allowed to keep any profit they made for themselves. The results? After two years, the poorly-enforced law has nonetheless dropped plastic bag consumption by a whopping 50% — keeping an estimated 100 billion plastic bags out of the landfills. … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Image: Youtube 2 Square Meters of Sunlight is All it Takes Last summer, I wrote about a cool video that showed how a solar oven could be used to melt steel . It’s a good demonstration of just how much solar energy is hitting the Earth (it’s one thing to know abstractly, but it’s much more memorable to see it in action). Here’s another very cool video in the same vein, except that they don’t just stick to steel (which has a melting point of approx. 1,370 °C/2,500 °F). The best quo… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo: DVIDSHUB , Flickr, CC In the first nine months of this year, more than 21,000 people perished around the world due to climate-related events, a new report from Oxfam finds. That’s more than twice as many died in all of 2009. This news should hardly be surprising to anyone who follows international news — the flooding in Pakistan , heat waves in Russia , and sea level rise in island nations like T… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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International efforts to reduce fishing quotas for Icritically endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna , or better yet ban the trade outright, may have failed (again…), but that doesn’t mean you can’t help take action to reduce demand. The Center for Biological Diversity has just launched a boycott campaign urging chefs, restauranteurs and consumers to not buy or serve the bluefin… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Factory Farms Decreasing in Number, But Increasing in Size: 20 Percent Growth in 5 Years
November 30, 2010 No Comment
Image: Friend of Family Farmers via flickr Despite small but significant signs that the country wants to move in a different direction, factory farms across the country are growing at an unprecedented rate—not in number, but in size. … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Image Credit: Green Building Advisor From LEED towers to single family houses, the problem is the same; Some complain that the buildings don’t save enough energy. Building envelope expert Joe Lstiburek complains that LEED wants buildings to be too ventilated. Why? “Because of activists on the LEED committee that say everything in a building is unhealthy and sick.” Meanwhile, others complain that sealing up buildings a… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo credit: Wikipedia /Creative Commons Lonesome George is quite a character. He’s a Pinta Island tortoise, and, as Brian noted when he visited a few years ago , he’s the last of this breed. Yep, that means when he’s gone, that’s it — his species will be lost to the world forever. That doesn’t mean that all hope for him or his kind is lost, though…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo: Kelly Rossiter I’ve tried lots of vegetarian chilies over the years, but I seldom find them really satisfying. My book club was having a chocolate themed dinner and I found this recipe for Pinto Bean Mole Chili and decided to try it. Everybody loved it, and they ate the entire pot, along with all the other main course offerings that people brought…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
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